Unspeakable things
by An Engineer
Summary: Because sometimes actions just speak louder than words - SasuSaku, AU
1. Chapter 1

**_Unspeakable things_**

**~ for the song "Candles" by Daughter, because they are simply awe-inspiring**

* * *

**_Out of the hum of the street lights_**

**_And into a forest_**

* * *

_Suddenly it's suffocating her. Get off campus get off campus get off campus right this second or else. She darts down the sidewalk and across the street before the little flashing man goes away. Trudges along the string full of shops that runs parallel to the west university border. The frozen yogurt place and the Starbucks and the vintage clothes racks and the taco shop are all full of campus kids; it's no different than being in the middle of the liberal arts quad or the union building. It's not good enough. The laughing in the streets is too loud; it pounds in her head, makes her blood throb and her knees knock. Harder to breath. Crushing._

_Walking. Walking walking walking. Past the all-night café. Then the bike shop. Fed-ex. Apartment buildings that she sort of knows. The sandwich place she's been once. A game shop only ever heard of. The anonymity. It's better._

_It's not enough though. The bright lights of the university buildings, a few short blocks away, seem to glare like menacing eyes waiting patiently for her inevitable return. She senses the heavy hands itching to make another grab at her throat. Tugs anxiously at the strap of her purse, where there is a little safety nest of robin's egg blue pills._

_She crosses an intersection, clumsy with her haste; a right-turning truck nearly takes her out and she notices for the first time, as she swerves away and off of the main sidewalk, that there are residential houses here. The tiny, quirky kind that have been standing forever. The lawns are all overgrown and none of them match like in a suburb. It's almost pitch black too; no streetlights ever built down there. One buzzes loudly overhead at the mouth of the street, but past the light of that nothing is visible._

_For some reason it is so so appealing. She checks her watch and it's already 10 pm. Checks behind and can no longer find a building that looks familiar. The sketchy people are starting to come out from wherever they like to hide during the day. The neon in Ken's 24 Hour Donuts flickers. Drunk kids wait for the 1M – Southbound. She hasn't even remembered to program the SafeWalk number into her phone._

_She walks down the pitch dark street, and she can breath again._

* * *

He works at The Spiderhouse, taking orders for booze. It's a Friday night, but not as busy as usual because the local indie band that comes in to play kind of sucks; one of the sound effects on their synthesizer is a car alarm recording of all things. They all wince in time, even the people who are supposed to be drunk past listening.

Suigetsu takes her order, not him. Leaves the menu for her alcohol-side-up like they always do for the night crowd. She immediately flips it over and orders coffee and hummus. Who in God's name comes into a patio bar at 10 pm on a Friday and orders that?

The Spiderhouse is known for being unique. It's a college bar with none of the giant projectors featuring the football team (getting their asses handed to them), chicken wings, or drunk sorority girls. The building is a converted house; it's impossible for anyone to ever find the ladies' room. Upperclassmen/grad students/real adults go there and get drunk but don't act like they are. The air is positively heavy with indie music and multicolored string lights. Sasuke has worked there for two months now though; it ceases to mean anything to him anymore – he may as well be wearing a laminated nametag at TGI Fridays.

Because even here, in this "unique" environment, everyone sort of normals out. Different has become mainstream. People with dyed hair try too hard to listen to bands no one has heard of while they drink organic black coffee with sandwiches that have cranberry mayonnaise in them. The Spiderhouse is just the headquarters of another clique that its patrons dutifully conform themselves to.

Coffee-and-Hummus looks like she stepped into the wrong bar. Her jacket is an emerald green that matches her eyes, and it looks like it's brandless. Her shorts are especially short, but she's small so it looks normal on her. A lacy feminine tank top underneath somehow goes perfectly with the bright hoodie. Her hair is loose, air-dried and undyed. She does not conform to the dress code of bottle-black Bathory looks, funky tights, and lots of vintage, but the equivalent queen bees aren't looking. No one is looking.

Sui brings her hummus with sliced pita. Some new girl cocktailer drops off her coffee in a humongous mug. Sasuke mentally calculates her body weight and decides that she's not going to sleep tonight even if she wants to.

He looks up again as he's punching more beer orders into the billing kiosk. It's not that some girl sitting around eating is so damned interesting, it's just that she looks so unusual.

"Weird, right?" Suigetsu is suddenly elbowing him in the side, jerking his chin at the little iron table, "Who comes here and just sits around like that alone? Must be waiting for somebody. Or maybe her boyfriend is in the band or something." Sasuke fights back a wince at the stylized garbage coming from the basement of the house and through the crackling patio speakers.

"Yeah, I would feel really bad for her," his friend chuckles, massaging a hand through his spiky silver hair to alleviate a growing headache from the noise.

~o~

He stops looking; he's got orders to place and tips to earn (or not earn; usually he was just popular with the ladies, even though he never did anything extra for them). Suigetsu forgets too; her bill is so small that he's got bigger fish to fry elsewhere – the beer-guzzlers are the real money. In fact, Sasuke completely forgets about her until as he's brushing past an old (quirky) bathtub-turned-water-fountain and a rusted (oneofakind) patio set, his hands full of empty glasses, he hears a high, clear voice.

"Excuse me? Could I get some cream and sugar please? The other guy forgot to bring it." Her green eyes dart up just once to his face and then drop to somewhere midchest. Not the usual feminine gawk. He stops to peer down into her cup. The coffee is halfway gone. She's been sitting there for 45 minutes drinking bitter coffee that she doesn't like. The hummus is in a similar state. There's a napkin covered in scrawled handwriting that she puts her arms over protectively when his dark eyes land on it.

"What are you writing?" he doesn't really know why he asks.

"The next great American novel," she drawls, "Coffee stuff please?" He grunts back an answer that could be construed either negative or affirmative and glides away again. But two minutes later he brings her a little glass jar with half-and-half and four different types of sugar packets. He's too fast leaving to hear her thank-you.

He punches in more orders and watches over his shoulder. She sits at the wrought-iron table and reads the backs of all the sugar packets. Makes a face at some of them and picks out all the pink ones. She dumps in two of them, and two of the little capsules of half-and-half. Takes a sip and smiles to herself. Leans back in her chair, runs a hand through her loose hair and stares up at the crazy canopy of old Christmas lights.

People are starting to notice her now, as the garage band slips into an alt rock croon that's actually somewhere past decent. Somehow she pulls off coming to a patio bar by herself (she wouldn't have such a calm, dreamy look in her eyes if she'd gotten stood up, he reasons). Alone but not lonely.

Other patrons don't seem to be able to do the same though; Sasuke notes with disgust a middle aged man dressed like a biker who can't stop staring at her from his seat at the porch bar. He wonders if he should assume the responsibility of accidentally spilling something on the guy, but the man mobilizes before a plan is solid in his mind. Taking orders in a noisy bar has made him a pretty solid lip reader; he can't help but peer across the yard where the man has slowly shuffled up to the girl's wrought-iron table, toting along his fourth bottle of booze.

She looks up from her dreamy musing at his approach. Her face doesn't change as she listens to the words, but Sasuke can feel his own blood run involuntarily hotter as he reads his speech.

"Hey there. Would you like a _friend_, little missy?" His smile is oily.

Sasuke, and maybe the old man too, is dumbfounded as he watches the girl give him a polite, even sweet, smile. She makes eye contact; he wouldn't have wanted to look at the scum.

"No, thank you," he imagines her chirping voice.

And – whatthefuck – the old creeper smiles back at her, says good night, and just shuffles away. It's like her smile was a goddamned force field. Sasuke's heard of similar guys getting college girls drunk, messing with their cups, doing unspeakablethings. And this innocent-looking little doll of a girl just smiles and says "no, thank you".

An hour and a half later – he's watched her politely decline the advances of two groups of boys, still older looking than her but much more honorable looking than the biker guy – Sasuke brings her bill.

"Thanks," she mutters as she digs around in her purse for change. She gives him the same flashing eye contact, up and straight back down. His eyebrows furrow; he can't figure her out. He makes change right there at the table, he can't drag himself away from the infuriating puzzle of her face. Her expression is closed to him. He doesn't get a polite smile. He barely gets eye contact. He wonders the rest of the night, even after she finally twists her way through the maze of patio furniture and out the gate at 1 o' clock in the morning.

He wonders.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Unspeakable things_**

**~ for the song "Candles" by Daughter, because they are simply awe-inspiring**

* * *

**_Oh boy, take me away  
_**

**_Into the night_**

* * *

The next time he sees her he's definitely not expecting it. They're not at The Spiderhouse, but a few blocks away. He's out taking a smoke on the porch of the old house he rents with his obnoxious roommate.

At first he doesn't recognize her; he's only ever seen her once, drenched in the light of a thousand multicolored bulbs, and right now it's pitch black. The neighborhood they're in is so old – from back when downtown was a small town – that there are no street lights.

And then out of nowhere she just comes stumbling through the bushes. She stares hard into the abyss. All she can make out in the darkness is the lit end of his cigarette. He watches her jump as she realizes that she is staring at a person.

"H'llo." His voice is thick and deep with smoke.

"Hey." She has a little girl's voice. He wants to chuckle.

She keeps walking. He's kind of curious.

"What's up?"

The girl turns around slowly. Her skin is pale enough that he can just make out her face in the darkness.

"Taking a walk."

Here? Why? Are you fucking crazy, Coffee-and-Hummus?

"Sit?" he says instead. Pulls another cigarette out of his back pocket.

She shakes her pale head. "I don't smoke."

"Or drink. Kind of boring." She stares at him through the dark; his eyes are adjusting.

"I work at The Spiderhouse. You're the first person to order coffee past 6 pm there."

She shrugs a thin shoulder under what he thinks is the same green jacket, but he can't be sure in the black/gray/white world they are wrapped up in. "I'm still underage."

"So are plenty of people there."

"I have standards."

He raises his eyebrows at her. Judgy.

"They're my own standards; I don't say everyone has to be held to them. I just believe in legality."

"Calm down. I'm not a huge fan of drinking either."

She shoots him another of those fleeting, lightning-quick looks. He thinks it's aghast.

"But you're a bartender."

"They pay me in cash, not extra booze." He flicks open his lighter to ignite a second smoke and watches her face color.

"You can sit," he juts his chin toward the creaky wooden porch steps.

She adjusts her purse strap. Fidgety. Cagey. Uncomfortable. Her eyes refuse to rest on him for longer than half a second. He keeps his gaze on her heavy and steady, to contradict her. He makes her uncomfortable.

"It's not like I'm staying..."

He fights to make eye contact with her darting gaze. "Well do you want to? Or are you always alone?" Fine words, coming from him, the antisocial one. He grimaces at himself.

She opens her mouth to say no and it somehow comes out differently.

"Yes." She shakes her head quickly, "I mean, to the first one." She won't walk the three steps to his porch. He narrows his eyes at this odd, odd girl. Stubs out his cigarette on the sidewalk and lifts himself lazily up off the stairs. He towers over her a good eight inches. Sticks out his hand. It engulfs her wary little-girl fingers.

"Sasuke."

"Sakura."

* * *

They sit on the sidewalk just outside of his gate.

She's a quiet girl; he wonders if this is why she goes out alone.

In fact, she's very bad at making new friends. She confesses to him that aside from her roommate and the roommate of an old friend, every person she has in this city she went to high school with. Then he's the farthest goddamned thing from a social butterfly. They're the worst combination.

That first night she just watches him smoke for forty minutes. Or rather, sneaks short little sideways peeks at him. He wonders why he makes her so nervous, when she never even flinched at the dirty biker guy.

"What does smoking feel like?" her high voice finally comes out of the darkness. He blows smoke out of his mouth like a leaky balloon, surprised at the question.

"Nicotine relaxes. Never took a health class?" She bristles a little.

"I'm pre-med." He barks out a chuckle.

She tries again. "I mean, your lungs. What does it feel like to fill them up with smoke? It doesn't hurt? The chemicals..."

He weighs her question, takes a long drag.

"Normal. It feels normal." Her eyes glitter in the dark.

"How long have you been smoking?"

"If you're going to get preachy again, you can get out," he scoffs. A little defensive.

"I'm not trying to be a doctor. I was just curious." He believes her. Those green eyes look curious about _everything_. They're just so fucking innocent, like they think there's not a single dark, painful, horrible answer they'll ever-

"About a year. Ever since my brother died."

"Oh." And then it's quiet again. He at least respects that she doesn't say "I'm sorry". Why do people say that? It doesn't even make any sense. Annoying pseudoempathy just get out and shut up.

"So do you ever consider the economic impacts of smoking? It's not cheap, and I'm assuming you're a student?"

Did she really just ask him that?

Wide-eyed. And then.

He smirks.

* * *

She asks about all the darkness, all the bad.

Smoking.

Drinking.

His demons.

He asks for the good, for the light.

Pre-medicine.

Extracurriculars.

Proof of her angel-hood.

He thinks of the wolf in the fairy tale, being asked all the shy questions by the innocent little girl in rednowaitgreen. Trying to lure her closer. Over the gate. Up the porch. To the door. The wolf is easy to identify with because he is obviously the dark and fucked up one of the two of them. But he wants to save her, keep her from the dark, so it's a weird feeling to simultaneously be taking up two roles. Since when is the good guy disguising himself as the villain? It's just not efficient.

But he notices, when she shakes the pins and needles out of her legs and bids him goodnight, she doesn't walk on into the dark. She turns back toward campus the street the light. He watches until he can see her hair go from gray to pink.

Smirks.


	3. Chapter 3

**_Unspeakable things_**

**~ for the song "Candles" by Daughter, because they are simply awe-inspiring**

* * *

**_Scared I'll be torn apart_**

**_By a wolf in mask_**

* * *

He starts going out for a smoke every night. At first at the same time as that first night, and then branching out farther and farther in either direction until he's bringing his goddamned homework out there on the porch. He's waiting watching wondering _what the hell is wrong_ with this girl.

He soon realizes that it's on Wednesdays and Thursdays and sometimes Fridays that she takes her walks out into the darkness. Even worse; she's fucking predictable – every pedophile within four blocks could be tracking her. And so he makes it a point to grunt that hello every WednesdayThursdaysometimesFriday, offer her the smoke she won't take, ask her if she wants to come past the porch she'll only ever perch her skinny little butt on the outermost edge of. At least it stops her, at least he has it on his conscience that she is there bathed in the yellow porchlight and not _out_.

It bothers him, that she's cautious with him and ignores the danger of everyone else, when he's surely the _only_ _one_ who's thinking he'd bash in the goddamned face of anyone who'd hurt her.

Every night Sasuke sits there on his stoop, legs sprawled out in front of him and the sharp, cold concrete edge of the steps cutting uncomfortably through his clothes. A little pile of spent cigarettes at his side, marking the minutes it takes her to walk by. When he watches her sit, spewing nervous chatter about something she learned in class or something her roommate has done, he thinks maybe she can redeem him. She can be the good thing that he does that cancels out the bad, brings him back to an empty slate. If only things worked like that.

Every night she brushes off the seat of her pants as she gets up, bids him goodnight, and he watches her for as long as she's in sight. It's when it goes from being that night to tomorrow's early morning, when the lights in the house shut off behind him and he can hear Naruto slamming his bedroom door shut. When he drags himself up and away to prepare for sleep, work, class, a new day demanding to be faced, whatever, and scoops up the pile of little cigarette cadavers to toss in the trash.

Sasuke realizes he's getting addicted to the damned things, if he isn't already; the pile seems to grow every night. It's the sight of those crumpled, deformed white filters that does it. They stain his hands with nicotine like the guilty feelings he cannot ever completely wash away. They pile up in his hands, omnipresent and growing in number every night as if each little cylinder represents a sin that refuses to go unaccounted or forgotten.

Disregard for health. Check.

Vice. Check.

Extravagance. Check.

_"How long have you been smoking?"_

_"If you're going to get preachy again, you can get out," he scoffs. A little defensive._

_"I'm not trying to be a doctor. I was just curious." He believes her. Those green eyes look curious about everything. They're just so fucking innocent, like they think there's not a single dark, painful, horrible answer they'll ever-_

_"About a year. Ever since my brother died."_

Sakura helps him forget, but smoking always calls him back. It's an addiction. A reminder. He feels like he simultaneously hates it, needs it, and is being slowly killed by it from the inside. He's not just thinking of smoking in this way.

* * *

The scratching of pen against clipboard, jotting down some response or observation to whatever it is she has said, makes Sakura feel self-conscious, like she has failed somehow. If she had said something ordinary then making a note wouldn't be necessary, would it? If only she could know what the note said without being stuck guessing and worrying.

_Patient is getting worse. May need to recommend institutionalizing her._

_Abnormal cognitions. Needs more drugs._

_Playing tic tack toe?_

If only she could just know. Sakura loathes the unknown. The anxiety starts to creep up her skin in a hot flush. Her leg jitters hyperactively and she scratches at her neck, hoping her face isn't as red as it feels. Tsunade's amber eyes miss none of it. Sakura's green eyes dart several times to the clock on the wall of the office, wishing the session would just end already.

"Sakura, are you okay? You seem anxious right now."

She shakes her head quickly. "No, I'm fine." Her shoe thumps against the carpet; she can't stop jerking it up and down.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you still taking your pills?"

"Yes. It's getting better, actually."

Lies. The opposite is true.

"Good, good." Tsunade smiles sympathetically, her eyes joining her patient's on the clock. "Well, same time next week?"

Sakura lets out a breath and feels the temperature of her skin immediately drop closer to normal. She darts out of the office almost without confirming the appointment. She hates therapy. She hates not feeling normal.

And she hates drugs, not having control over her own body and emotions. Dangerously unknown. At least her anxiety feels natural to her, understandable. Her little blue pills are slowly but surely piling up in her nightstand. Reminding her, trying to coax her hand, take the easy way out, but she refuses to touch them.

Just looks at the clock again, counting the hours until it gets dark and she can walk the streets.

* * *

**Okay, I'm changing the format of this to better suit what I can handle right now. Lately I've been looking at what I have done on a couple of stories by way of updates, and was frustrated that I didn't seem to have enough for full chapters. Then I thought "Dude, this is fanfiction, you can do whatever you want, remember?". So I'll be making updates on this short but hopefully more frequent, since that's what I can really commit to nowadays.**

**Hope you all are doing well, and hope you enjoy reading!**

**- An Engineer**


	4. Chapter 4

**_Unspeakable things_**

**~ for the song "Candles" by Daughter, because they are simply awe-inspiring**

* * *

**_We're both in silence_**

**_Wide-eyed_**

* * *

It's a Thursday, at about eleven o' clock. The wrong eleven o' clock; the sun is out and there are people crowding the sidewalk on either side of him. Sasuke's first class is starting in two minutes, in an old auditorium in the south part of campus, but he's somewhere vaguely northwest. He thinks he remembers a coffeeshop in one of the buildings there - geology, biology, some other science whatever he hasn't had to take since freshman year - and he is in desperate need. Another late night. Another pile of cigarettes.

By the time he finds the damn place (it was the _chemistry_ building's basement) and pays for a ridiculously cheap paper cup from a bored grad student, his class is all but over anyway. He shrugs it off because he knows if he'd shown up without caffeine it would have been to the same effect as not showing up at all. A bell rings from somewhere and students start milling out of the classrooms and into the hallway.

Sasuke starts when he catches sight of a pink head emerging from Organic Chem 317, across the lobby. She's flanked on either side by two brunettes, so she doesn't see him staring. It's incredibly trippy seeing her on campus, going to class, normal, everyday. Evidence that she's not some fairy coming to him only by the light of the moon, half imaginary.

Without really consciously deciding to, Sasuke is following behind, dropping his coffee cup into a wastebasket as he pushes out the doors behind them.

~ o ~

He stays far enough behind the trio that he can't quite make out what they're saying, but the girls are all smiles and visible laughter as they walk together.

They go as a group as far as the neurobiology building in far west campus. The brunettes go inside, Sakura does not. He can see her face now as she walks briskly down the sidewalk alone. Her smile fades away quickly once she is out of sight of her friends, so much so that she actually looks upset. She keeps her eyes trained on the sidewalk in front of her, her face stony and her jaw clenched.

He's very curious now. Sasuke follows her a few blocks further to a crowded bus stop; on the other side of the street is a cluster of on-campus dormitories that she seems to be heading toward. The gray brick buildings are as dour as her face. The crowd at the corner grows as the light goes green and heavy traffic speeds by. The passing cars whip past, blowing scarves and hair, scattering papers, lifting girls' skirts dangerously high.

Sakura's pink hair blows back from her face. She has been squeezed to the front of the crowd, right up against the edge of the curb; her feet totter over the edge a bit as if she is testing a diving board. He watches her carefully, his body tensed, because he knows that expression on her face. She stares at the cars, zooming past at body-crunching speeds, as if she has the urge to dart in front of them.

He knows this expression and knows it well, because he's worn it himself plenty of times in the past year.

Sasuke's posture relaxes a little as the light goes red and the crowd trickles out across the street. He watches until he sees her, just a spot of pale pink in the dark mass, disappear into one of the buildings.`

His fingers itch toward his pocket for his lighter.

* * *

It's a Thursday night; she walks by as he's on his third cigarette. As he nods at her chirpy greeting he feels strangely guilty, as if seeing her today was some kind of violation, like he's a little kid who got up in the middle of the night, saw Santa Clause, and now has to play dumb about it.

She sits on the second step and he on the third. Quiet as usual while he smokes. He never really read into her little silences before; now he can't stop wondering if she's just busy thinking upsetting, depressing, jumping-in-front-of-noon-traffic type thoughts. He'd just assumed the only thing he'd ever have to watch out for was perverts at the Spiderhouse and drunk frat boys in his neighborhood, not whatever's going on in her own head. That's an enemy he doesn't know the first thing about dealing with.

He stubs out a cigarette on the concrete porch with more force than is necessary.

"Hey, are you okay?" comes out of his mouth, he can't help it.

She looks surprised; for once her green eyes meet his own full on for a few seconds, no shy darting away. And in that moment he suddely feels sure she can see everything in his expression, all the implications behind the four little words. He feels sure she knows he's not idly asking, that he knows something. Her eyes widen until he can see white all around the edges of the mossy green.

"Um yeah, of course. Well, kind of tired actually," Sakura mumbles. She sits up quickly, heads for the gate to his yard without meeting his eyes again, "I think I'll go now, I have a quiz in the morning, 'night."

She walks away very quickly; she's out of his line of sight in no time.

She doesn't come back into it for a full week.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Unspeakable things**_

**~ for the song "Candles" by Daughter, because they are simply awe-inspiring**

* * *

**_Blow out all the candles_**

* * *

She avoids walking past his house. At least after her last, uncomfortable exit, he's pretty _sure_ she's avoiding him, and isn't just busy with homework for organic chemistry or some other perfectly reasonable explanation. Then, this girl seems to bring out the paranoid in Sasuke.

But he _does_ know that homework or not, Sakura is a night owl who will be needing her coffee fix sooner or later. The Spiderhouse is the only place that's not a gas station still offering caffeine past 11 pm. He keeps an eye out for her.

~ o ~

It's a Friday. Just after midnight.

"Going out for a smoke. Ten minutes," he mutters to Kakashi, who just looks up from his desk in the Spiderhouse's back office and shakes his silver head, and then he's out the door after her, following the familiar green-clad back cutting across the parking lot. She caught up with Suigetsu at the door and asked for a to-go cup. Sneaky.

Sasuke watches her at a distance as she waits for the flow of cars to subside so she can cross. It's a major street; he's never seen anyone cross unprotected successfully unless they ran for it like a madman. Somehow she's lucky enough to speedwalk and make it to the other side. She winds up in front of the sketchy game store where drunks and druggies hang out after hours. The usual crowd is there, and he curses because there's traffic again so he can't cross the street to defend her. She waits, small and pink and innocent, acting oblivious to them behind her as she stands at the corner and waits to cross the perpendicular-running street. There's another girl waiting there too; she's dressed in athletic clothes and walking a large dog with pointed ears and even more pointed teeth. The guys stumble over and start harassing – _seriously?_ – the girl with the dog; they ignore Sakura completely.

She makes it to the dingy 24 hour donut shop and – good God – there are men in there three times as big as her, covered in tattoos. He watches through the plate glass walls as the largest of the men leans over to open the door for her. She gives him that smile of hers and a bird's-voice 'thank you'. They let her cut them in line, and she emerges unscathed with a strawberry-filled pastry swaddled in wax paper.

It's really bizarre. He starts wondering if it's just the universe fucking with him. Maybe he's just being paranoid – she looks so fragile and young after all – because downtown is full of sketchy people he's hardly ever batted an eye at before.

He can't help but think that it's probably chance, that the moment he decides she's the most goddamned lucky, untouchable girl in the city and stops looking, that will be the moment when unspeakablethings happen.

* * *

She waits to take a bite out of her doughnut until she's off the main street, walking in Sasuke's darkened neighborhood but a couple streets down from his, just in case. She saw him working at the Spiderhouse when she ducked behind the bar and begged Suigetsu for some coffee.

So it scares the shit out of her when a hand grabs her shoulder in the darkness. Embarrassingly, she's so caught off guard that all that manages to escape her throat is a high-pitched squeak of surprise, no good, healthy scream to get anyone rushing to her aid. Her hands reflexively tense into fists, and she accidentally strangles all the strawberry filling out of her doughnut. It drips to the sidewalk below, dark red like blood, as if a grisly crime has already been perpetrated.

But it's a familiar figure that meets her eyes as she whirls around. Really, it's so dark that she probably recognizes the faint scent of cigarettes before she can make out his features.

"Sasuke," she gasps out, as her heart struggles to find its rhythm again. He doesn't say anything in response, and it's too dark to get much of a read on his face.

She recovers the air in her lungs quickly to snap at him, "Jesus, you almost scared me to death, you asshole."

His eyes narrow. Really? _She's_ angry with _him_? When _she's_ the one who seems to be purposely undermining every effort he makes to keep her out of trouble. He could easily have been a gangster/rapist/murderer grabbing her instead. The thought makes him feel sick. It's too hard secretly trying to protect someone who seems either oblivious to danger or blatantly courting it. Honestly, ever since Sasuke saw her that one day at the bus stop, the thought has crossed his mind that this is her more passive, indirect way of stepping out into traffic. Waiting for that car that will not swerve but hit her.

The thought just makes him that much more determined to be standing there on the curb, holding her back before she can make a move.

She opens her mouth and starts to say something else vituperative, but her voice cuts off when Sasuke takes a step forward, breaching the distance that has always been between them, and wraps his long arms around her tightly.

She can't really find words for this, and he still doesn't say anything either. She just lets him hold her, the seconds stretching into a minute, then a couple of minutes…

"Sakura, don't be stupid," he finally mumbles; his chin rests on her head and she can feel the words vibrating in his throat. She can't really think of an appropriate response, just gives him a tentative little squeeze back, and they stand there wrapped up in the dark and each others' arms.

The moment has to come to an end and he releases her, quietly suggests she go back to her dorm, pretends to watch her just until she hits the streetlight at the corner. Actually goes so far as to walk the four blocks to her building trailing behind her to see that she gets in alright, and only then does he stuff his hands in his pockets and start walking back to the Spiderhouse.

Funny thing, he asked Kakashi to leave for a smoke, but not once did he feel the usual urge to light up. His battered, half-empty pack of menthols stays in his jacket, untouched.

* * *

**There have been a lot more follows on this story since I've been updating, which I love. I'd also love some feedback, to hear some thoughts!**

**Peace!**

**- An Engineer**

**(P.S. - why yes, lovelies, I am putting off studying for my chem test to keep updating, aren't I awesome? Going back to writing fanfiction is like going back to smoking cigarettes: addictive. Only they don't make a gum to deal with that. Darn.)**


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